


IPA (Intergalactic Phonetic Aurebesh)

by ArsenicAndOldLace



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Academia, F/F, Gen, Grocery Shopping, IPA-International Phonetic Alphabet, Languages and Linguistics, University, basic, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:48:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21977608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArsenicAndOldLace/pseuds/ArsenicAndOldLace
Summary: Professor Sha Nimā Khanazad teaches Linguistics 230: Linguistics of Basic. This semester she has a new student who's a clone trooper. Nimā and her wife befriend him.
Relationships: OFC/OFC
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	1. Bump

**Author's Note:**

> I love Star Wars, but I wish they had consulted with a linguist. Of course, if the creators had consulted with any experts we wouldn't have the hot mess we have today. Basically, I rationalize Aurebesh and Basic, which for the purposes of this fic resembles English in phonology and structure, and Aurebesh is similar to the Latin alphabet, in the sense that it was created a long time ago for some language other than Basic, but now Basic uses it even though the alphabet doesn't have enough symbols. Also, like English, the spellings of Basic show the history of the word instead of how it's currently pronounced. 
> 
> If you notice a discrepancy between how I describe Basic (English) and what you know of English, feel free to let me know in a comment. I based it off of General American instead of another dialect because I'm American. Some dialects have more consonants, some have less, same with the vowels. 
> 
> Nimā and her language and culture are my own invention. 
> 
> Barely edited and unbetaed.

Nimā was tired. She was teaching four classes this semester and while she loved all things linguistics, four was too many. She was behind in grading and it was only the first month of classes. 

While she was relatively new to Coruscant Central University, she was not really new to teaching, having been a teaching assistant for the last five years of her mastery apprenticeship. Teaching and research was hard enough to balance when she was just teaching one class, but now that she was expected to present new research and teach full time it made her find new grey hairs on her scalp. Her wife said they made her look distinguished, but she was still doubtful. 

Even with all the stress, there was nothing she would rather be doing that teaching students about language. Her own research was focused on how Coruscanti Health Services could better serve non-native speakers of Coruscanti Basic. She herself was a non-native speaker, even though she grew up on Coruscant. That was always a fun fact to share in her first class. 

It astonished students to realize that the majority or Coruscanti natives did not speak Standard Coruscanti Basic as their first language. Most learnt SCB in school, as it was the mandatory language of instruction. The next idea she had to breach was that Aurabesh was not made for Basic, but adapted from a now-dead language, so Basic's spelling did not match how it was said. Students tended to get stuck on the spelling of words. But how freeing it was to know that there wasn't a wrong way to say things! 

"Nimā!" Before she could look up she ran into something very hard. "Nimā!" 

"Whoops. I'm so sorry, uh…" She finally looked up. She had run into the chair of her department! "Sooshi, sorry! I didn't see you!"

Sooshi Samboil sniffed ceremonially. "I guess I will let that pass. Just because I have a shell doesn't mean my feelings don't get hurt." He was a Vippet, and his shell was harder than most.

She smiled. His sarcasm aside, he held her no ill will. "Did your article get accepted by the Journal of Human Languages?"

He sniffed again. "Alas, their hearts are harder than my shell could ever be, they completely rejected it."

She gave him another smile. Every being deserved encouragement. "Such is the life of an academic. Have you tried the Humanoid Languages Journal?" 

"Not yet. Brilliant idea. I am not above submitting my article to our rival university's journal. We must scrape what we can off the floor of the galaxy." 

"Ugh. The galaxy's floor probably looks like Coruscant's lowest level." She knew what that looked like from experience. 

"Wrong. It looks like the linguistics journal run by Northern Coruscant Enlightened University." He visibly shuddered, then gathered himself. "I do have a meeting in a few minutes, so I have to run, metaphorically of course." He gave her a friendly nod and headed off. 

"Have a good meeting!" She called after him. As exhausted as she felt teaching four classes she imagined he was even more tired. She did not envy his job one bit. Except for the pay raise. 70,000 credits a year was no joke. She was lucky. Her wife's job in the senate came with an apartment, so that lifted an enormous weight off of her back. 

She glanced at her com. It was almost time for her first class. She had gotten a message to her com from an extension she hadn't seen before requesting to observe her intro Basic linguistics class. She had said yes. Though the university generally disapproved of outsiders attending for free, she thought anyone ought to be able to come and see what a university could teach. Urging her legs faster, she made it into a closing turbolift. Looking down, she saw GAR uniform pants. She slowly raised her head. She might not know much about current events, but even she recognized the uniform and the man standing before her. She'd only ever seen clones around the senate before. Seeing one here broke her out of her routine. 

"Excuse me, Sir, are you here for a class?" The words came out of her mouth before she thought about it. She cringed, expecting that he'd been asked at least four times since he arrived at the university. 

He quickly replied, "Yes, ma'am. I'm here as a trial run. They want to see how we adapt to civilian life." 

She nodded. She had wondered what would happen to the clones when the war ended. Most of the time she ignored the news, but the fact that clones were everywhere on the upper levels and in propaganda made them hard to ignore. Notably, the propaganda characterized them as perfect soldiers, happy to fight and die for the Republic. She often thought that might not be so. "Why start so late in the term?"

"Honestly ma'am, I don't know." He shrugged. 

She was glad he wasn't wearing a helmet. It made it easier to view him as a person. "Well, Sir, I hope to see you around more." 

"I do too ma'am." He smiled at her. 

She couldn't help but smile back. To think people who looked just like him were dying right now on some mudball. "Do you have a name?" 

"My designation is CT-7892. But please call me Babble."

"Babble. Um. Okay." She never thought she'd meet a being named after a stage of language acquisition, but today was a new day. She wondered out loud, "How'd you get a name like Babble?" The concept of self-naming was familiar to her, as many cultures throughout the galaxy did that, but often the names were a little nicer sounding than babble. At this point the doors opened and they both got off and started walking down the hallway.

"When I was still a shiny I discovered the holonet, and I ended up on a site for learning languages. I tried to practice out loud and my squadmates thought it was hilarious. So I got named Babble. For babbling. I resented it for a little bit, but a name's a name. And I needed one. Before that my squad just called me Ninety-two. Not super original." He shrugged. "All in all, I really was babbling. And now I'm here with you." He met her eyes. "What's your name?" 

"I'm Sha Nimā Khanazad. But everyone here calls me Nishā. Except for most of my students, they call me Professor Khanazad. Please don't call me that." 

"Then I won't. What do you teach here?" 

She reached a classroom, which he entered. She followed after him and said, "I teach this. Welcome to Linguistics, Jī Babble." 

She greeted the rest of the class and logged in to the computer terminal. The rest of the class glanced at their new student from the corner of their eyes, but otherwise didn't greet him, though Vrrnajwruukk gave him a perfunctory acknowledgement. 

"We're one month into the semester, I hope we're all settling in! Today we're going to briefly cover why Basic is spelt so strangely, then we're going to move on to syntax. I know you're all still wondering how you did on the first exam, and while I haven't finished grading, everything is looking pretty good so far! Now don't forget the IPA symbols, as we run through orthography, IPA is more helpful than ever!" She took a breath. 

"Aurebesh has 34 letters. How many phonemes does Basic have again?"

Nakki Sanbrz, a third-year finance student, answered her question. "24 consonants and 13 vowels." 

She appreciated his willingness to participate. And he actually did the readings. "That's right. Way more sounds than letters. In order to represent the sounds of Basic, they had to either adapt using diacritics, or use combinations of letters to make one sound. In addition, Basic spelling fossilized over two thousand years ago. It's not hard to imagine that how we speak Basic has changed a lot since then." 

A raised hand. Babble. That was good, he was willing to take up space. "Babble, what's your question?"

"If Aurebesh doesn't fit Basic, why didn't they make a new Aurebesh? With enough letters for all the sounds?" 

"That is an excellent question. Some languages did just that. They took Aurebesh and changed it a lot. But why not Basic?" She paused. While she loved this topic, the intersection of politics, history, and linguistics, she knew not everyone did. And she wasn't actually teaching a class on the history of Basic. But it was good to know that the language someone speaks didn't exist in a vacuum. 

"Basic is not always written in Aurebesh, it is also written in High Galactic and Outer Rim Basic. What those all have in common is that they were not invented for Basic. High Galactic was used by several human societies for a lost language. We know it mostly from place names. Unfortunately, the majority of writings were on paper, a relatively fragile material, and next to none survive." 

"Outer Rim Basic, much like High Galactic, has 26 letters, and was originally for a different language." 

This time Gyangso Ha Hōsyangi broke in on her. He was getting bolder. Good. 

"Professor Khanazad, why don't we use an aurebesh just for Basic?"

"Thank you Jī Gyangso. I was getting a little off track. The truth is there have been several writing systems invented just for Basic. None have caught on galaxy-wide. Even spelling reform hasn't caught on, and that's not even using a whole new writing system." 

"There is no regulatory body for Basic, so there is no authority to manage the spelling. As I mentioned earlier, it fossilized several thousand years ago. Sounds we no longer have are still written, and sounds we now have aren't. For example, Basic used to have a velar fricative, it's still written as a krenth, but we always pronounce it as a voiceless velar stop. Another example of a sound we do have but don't write is the voiced interdental fricative. We write both it and its voiceless counterpart as a thesh." 

Gwrrajjrarrr glanced pointedly at the clock and started packing her things in her bag. Nishā looked at her own com. She still had three minutes. But she supposed she should be nice. 

"Before you leave, remember your homework from chapter eight of the text is due by next class! Make sure you read the questions carefully! Have a good rest of your day!" She managed to squeeze all that out before Gwrrajjrarr actually got up and left. She was about a lecture behind, but that was expected. As long as she was only one lecture behind. As she gathered up her things and logged out of the computer, Babble cleared his throat in front of her. 

"Yes?" She raised her eyebrows.

"Ma'am"

"Call me Nishā." 

"Ma'am. I know I started late. Do you have a syllabus or office hours?"

"Oh yes! Back in my office. I have office hours starting now if you have time?"

He nodded. "I have all day, ma'-Nishā. I'm only taking five classes."

He clearly had no idea that five classes were actually an overly ambitious student's course load. Or maybe he did. He probably was an overly ambitious student. She wondered if he had any friends. Or if he'd packed lunch. Or if he had ever eaten in somebody's home. Maybe her wife, Ganīd, would welcome him. Who was she kidding? Ganīd would love him and feed him. She loved loving people almost as much as she loved making food and eating it. She'd bring it up to her tonight at dinner. As they reached her office she realized he'd been quiet the whole time. "Did you bring lunch?"

"Yes ma'am, I brought some food." 

She bet it was rations. "Would you like some real food?"

"Oh ma'am, you've just found your way into my heart. If it's no trouble."

"It's no trouble at all! My wife always makes lunch for me, and while it's delicious, she makes way too much!" Today Ganīd had packed her homemade fried towsi and fresh ganzani vegetables, with four huge hahafa berries. It was enough to make her stomach burst if she was eating alone. If she believed in the Force, like those Jedi, or the ancestors, like her family, then she would have thought that some being set this all up. She only really believed in Ganīd's Khalla god. And those gods never really did anything for nothing. And she certainly hadn't offered her Khalla anything recently. Maybe she would go to the temple after dinner tonight. That would make Ganīd happy. Her wife valued the Khallama and cared for hers well. 

"Whatever you say, ma'am. I'm not sure too much food is possible, though." 

She could tell this man had never been to a true Dawūnazad festival. Her people could feed the entire GAR and still have food left over. She told him as much, but he just laughed. 

Fine. He didn't believe her. Now she was sure that she would invite him to the festival if he was still on the planet next year. 

She rummaged around her desk, sure that she had an extra bowl somewhere. Then she gasped, realizing that she hadn't sat Babble down and he was still standing in her doorway. "I'm sorry! Come in, come in, I'm just looking for a bowl for you."

He didn't seem too distraught. "If you need help finding something, I'm pretty good at looking for things. I'm a sniper."

Facing away from him she made a face. His reminder that he was a part of the ongoing conflict gave her a twist in her gut. She wondered if he'd killed anyone. Then she shook her head and got back to looking. "Don't worry. What looks like a mess to you is a very advanced filing system. I should find the bowl right...here!" Triumphantly she lifted the bowl up like an offering. It did not look clean. 

"That doesn't look quite clean," he muttered. 

She sighed. "Your eyes are too good."

To take the attention off her mess, she offered him a hahafa berry. 

His eyes widened to almost the size of the berry. "Whoa."

She nodded, pleased with his reaction. "Whoa is right. This one's a small one."

"Where do you find these? I've never seen anything like them." Babble was having a blast, there was nothing like trying new foods. It was almost as good as learning a new language. The galaxy was full of them, and in Coruscant he could find almost anything the galaxy had to offer thanks to the wonder of modern space travel. 

She smiled. A fun trip! She and Ganīd could take him to the closest Gājāz market. "When do you have free time or leave? I just ask because me and my wife would love to take you to a Gājāz market!" 

His eyes got even wider than they were when he saw the berry. "A food market? Ma'am, I'd sell my own brothers to go to a food market. Yes. Yes, Yes, Yes."   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Consciousness Raising/Thou Art

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sentient beings are we. Regardless of what our creators hoped for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is sponsored by people being rude to me on Tumblr. I avoided it for a day and wrote instead of uselessly browsing in my free time. A miracle. As ever, unbetaed, unedited.

Ganīd wondered what Nishā was so excited about. Normally, Nishā came home drained. Both of them worked long days, and they spent the evening recovering for the next day. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“How-” 

“How was your day?” Nishā managed to cut in before Ganīd finished asking. 

“My day was alright. I had to run the proposed budget today. No one liked it, but I’m so glad to have it done.”

“Oh, very nice.” 

“Yes, it’s great, people kept comming me asking for the report, and I’m like, ‘No, I haven’t run it yet, it’s a big vaping report. Osik.” 

"But it's done. You don't have to look at it again this fiscal year, right?"

"Right." Ganīd let out a big sigh. Sometimes, most times, she wished she wasn't the Controller for the Senate Building Accounting Department. Right now they were preparing for the annual audit. It paid enough, and they had an apartment on the upper midlevels off the Senate building, close to a maglev train station. 

Time to question Nishā. "How are you? You were excited when you got home."

"Oh right, I almost forgot."

"Mm."

"I have a new student!"

"Now? It's the middle of the semester."

"Yes! I was totally surprised. Two days ago I had a strange message on my come asking if I accepted observers, but instead of an observer or an auditor, he was a real student!"

"That's pretty cool, and kind of weird, but you have lots of students and they're all lovely in their own ways, what's his name?" Ganīd watched Nishā smile. Ancestors below, she never got tired of that smile.

"His name's Babble."

"Is that a nickname?"

"No, it's his real name! He's a clone, studying here to check out how clones adapt to civilian life."

"Wow. That's totally unexpected."

"I certainly didn't. But I invited him to come grocery shopping with us!"

"I suppose we haven't gone for a couple weeks and I'm starting to scrape the bottom of our cabinets."

"I know, that's why I invited him. And you should've seen his face when I gave him a hahafa berry. He couldn't believe it was real. And I shared my lunch with him."

"Sounds like you had a busy day. Did you set a time?"

"No, it slipped my mind. How about the next day off?" 

"Since I ran that report and signed a bunch of things today, I can let my minions do most things over the weekend. That's good with me." It was always fun to have plans to look forward to. 

Nishā nodded. Now she was ready for tomorrow's class. Prepared. Prepped. Gājāz market fun run was a go. 

-

Babble was actually excited for tomorrow. He had three of his classes two days a week, one one day a week, and the other, his linguistics class, two days a week right next to each other. His squadmates were also enrolled, though most of them weren't quite as excited as him. Stony was though. He was assigned to a geology class and it was like a dream come true for him. That di'kut loved his rocks. 

The door crashed open. "Hey, I met a woman! She had beautiful curly hair, and her eyes were dark, dark brown. You couldn't tell her pupil from her iris. You could get lost in them. And she was so smart." Pants was loud like that. 

"Did you learn anything else?" This time, Wiggle spoke from the corner, still staring intensely at his datapad. 

Pants grinned. "She's teaching my Mandalorian history class. She even speaks Mando'a!" 

The banter continued while Babble thought longingly of the lunch he'd had with Professor Nishā. A rumble interrupted his thoughts. Ugh. MREs for dinner. Whenever he tasted outside food, he grew more and more disgusted with what he'd grown up with. They hadn't set a time. He hoped whenever she was available lined up with his leave. He'd never gone grocery shopping, and she knew so much about how the world beyond the GAR worked. She might be his first friend. He had a huge family, but a friend. That was special. Assuming they were able to meet up. 

-

Babble made sure to be at class early. He checked the syllabus and reviewed his notes on the reading. Though he was primarily focused on his notes, he still was quite aware of several other eyes on him. It was strange being exotic. He heard the door slide open and looked up. Finally, Professor Nishā was here. 

Class went well. Most people were engaged, and several asked excellent questions. They made her excited for the galaxy, even with the war on. Babble especially had asked an insightful question regarding syntax trees, which provoked a couple of minutes of class discussion. While she was packing her bag she heard footsteps and looked up. Ah. Here he was, hopefully he could let her know times that worked for him.

"Hello Professor Nishā."

"Hi."

"Were you still thinking of taking me to a market?"

"Yes! I was going to ask you if you were still interested."

"Of course, ma'am."

"What are some times that work for you? I know I forgot to set a date yesterday."

He had negotiated with his brothers so he could spend several hours straight free on the weekend. "This weekend works for me."

Her heart warmed. This was such a fantastic opportunity! Not to mention, the dialect of Basic spoken by clone troopers hadn't been studied at all. Not that she'd be studying Babble, but it did open up possibilities. She loved sharing her culture with others too. "This weekend is perfect! My wife, Ganīd, is available also, she's the main grocery shopper in our family."

-

Wiggle wondered where Babble was going. Wiggle had promised to take over his duties for the next few hours, Babble was always good for a favor later, but he had looked excited enough about today to mean something significant. Normally, with any other brother, he'd guess a woman, but Babble wasn't into women. Wasn't into much except learning. He was respectable like that. Wiggle would grill him, but that would take all the fun out of guessing. 

-

The day was a blur of sights and sounds. The smells alone sent him to a higher plane. "Jī Babble, Coruscant to Babblejī, try some of this!" Ganīd's small hand held a huge hunk of something unidentifiable. It smelt good, even better than the gusqut she'd shown him earlier. When he bit down, he felt the Force. Tell the GAR he'd won the war, this was what victory tasted like. He thought he might never go back and make his home at the market instead. 

Reality broke in with the form of Nishā, grabbing his and Ganīd's arms, dragging them out of the throng surrounding the stall selling little pieces of illumination. "I see you are busy tasting some bādakh, but now, we have to say hello to my aunt, Dūwez Ankhāttī. She has a stall near the end of this row." 

"What does she sell?" He thought it could be anything at this point. Maybe it would top the thing, the bādakh, he had just tried. 

As they pushed their way through, Nishā explained that her aunt sold traditional medicines and cures, called iwulbēza. 

"How does she get the ingredients?" Babble asked.

"It's harder now, with the war, our homeplanet's in the midrim. Thankfully it's not an important one, strategically or otherwise, but you know how it is." She cringed realizing that was insensitive.

He gave her a knowing look. "I do know." 

"We have a large diaspora here, compared to our planet's total population, so it allows for good community and support. It isn't large by Galactic standards of course, but it's kind of unfortunately large."

"Why is it so big?" 

This time Ganīd answered. "We had a terrible famine on our planet about 40 standard years ago. There were several civil wars too. Not much of an economy. Even today, while there's peace, the government is corrupt and there's a lot of unrest, particularly where most of our families here are from, the Eastern Islands."

"So your families fled war?" 

"Yeah. And there were religious issues too. Nishā's extended family and my own follow the Twin Paths. The Khallama gods and the ancestors. The government officially allows all religions, but in reality they find reasons. They deny permits for temples and create laws we can't comply with. So while Coruscant isn't home, at least we can be ourselves here."

"Would you die for the Republic?" He had to ask. It had struck him then, as it always did, just how far away his life was from the lives of those who made up the Republic. Would she die?

"I don't know." How could she know. She didn't love the Republic. She thought it was a corrupt inept overextended excuse for a democracy. But here she was, talking to someone whose entire life was made for the Republic. Who could never legally leave its service. That answered his question then. "I wouldn't willingly die for the Republic."

He nodded. This confirmed something he had felt. 

"I don't know that I'd even die for my own planet, for my people. I do know that, as far as it depends on me, I would die for Ganīd."

Maybe that was what he needed. He would die for his brothers. But if they kept going this way, dying not for each other, but for the Republic, they'd never be free. Oh, it was treasonous. He should never say this out loud. He was no traitor. But it wouldn't be his brothers he'd betray. He knew the Separatists thought nothing of lives. Where was freedom to be found? 

Ganīd stared at them. She knew Nishā loved her, but it always made her stagger, to know Nishā would fight for her. And Babble. She was no Wise Woman, Jedi, or Madmanuq, somebody in touch with that beyond, but she could tell that he had reached a point of shattering. What was he deciding? 

Babble looked up. He had to tell someone. Even if he didn't live beyond this war, he wanted a record of the truth. He had the feeling that Shas Nimā 'Nishā' and Ganīd Khanazad would keep his truth alive. "If I die, it's for my brothers." Nothing treasonous there. "But while I live, I'll seek freedom." From the Republic was left unsaid. They knew what he meant. 

"Jī Babble, we'll remember you in our prayers always." We'll carry you with us. 

Ganīd broke first. "We still need to buy some ingredients and greet Auntie Ankhāttī."

"Right."

"Of course." 

They shuffled around. The market had lost a little of its luster. After spending a half an hour taking tea with Dūwez Ankhāttī, they stopped a few more stalls. Soon enough they had everything they needed for lunch, and they boarded the nearest train.

On the crowded train it was impossible to avoid seeing the glances beings cast towards Babble. Nishā understood. Clones were seen only on holocasts about faraway worlds and the rarefied circles the Chancellor occupied. They were up there with Jedi in terms of oddities. But one on the train with them made him a real person. Seeing him brought the war home to the everyday commute. 

When they got home, Ganīd began issuing orders with an air of extreme authority. Babble found himself obeying as he would a superior. She certainly was his superior in the kitchen. He reckoned she was the Chancellor's superior in the kitchen too. When he was sent out into the living area he joined Nishā in preparing the table. No one had talked much beyond remarking over the things they saw while out at the market. It wasn't in his nature to be the first to break the silence, but something told him he should. "Nishā. How are we eating the stew? Why don't we have spoons?" 

Her face relaxed once he broke the silence. "In our culture we don't really use utensils. We eat with our hands. For the stew we'll use that wednessu rice to soak it up and eat it." 

"Makes sense." It did. His mouth was watering. 

"Dearest Nishā! I need my sous chef!" 

"I gotta run or she'll eat me." Nishā winked at him.

"I heard that! And don't think I've forgotten about you, dear Babble, do come into the kitchen."

When he entered, the air made his eyes water. It was spicy. Ganīd shot him a knowing look as she tossed some peppers in her small frying pan. “Why don’t you join Nishā in kneading the dough for the shab. Don’t overknead it!”

He joined Nishā at her labor. It was a sizable hunk of dough. He was a little scared of doing this wrong. He told her as much.

“Don’t worry. It’ll still taste good even if we overknead it. It just won’t be as fluffy.” 

This assauged some of his fears. While he knew the women wouldn’t call him non-functional and deactivate him, he still felt the fear of failure strongly. 

-

"Tonight went really well." 

A pause, "yeah." Ganīd responded. 

"Why the pause?" 

"Well, the night went really well, but sometimes I felt like Babble was expecting us to turn on him." 

"I hope he knows we wouldn't."

"Would we? If the Separatists were here, would we want clones to fight?"

"No, of course not." Would she? Maybe maybe. She hoped she wouldn't trade in her ideals if things got tough. But she couldn't tell. What she could do was be a friend and a teacher and try to teach the next generation of leaders that there was a better way forward than their current system. That their government was not innate or fated or immutable. That the Galactic Republic either had to change or die. And both options were preferable to it remaining as it always was. Senators were divorced from their people and problems, and no body that served over so many systems could attend to the needs of all. Of course, these were all just ideals. She didn't have actions to back them up. But maybe she'd start. She hoped her resolve would last longer than just tonight.

-

Babble had a thought stuck in his mind. The endless gray of the barracks didn't provide anything else for him to think about. It tried to stifle everything. The Republic, slow, bloated, would never change. He knew better than to think that the Confederacy would birth a brighter future. What if he did something. Something big. The thing wouldn't change everyone's lives, but he could change his squads'. The brothers he saw everyday. 

He would make the GAR groan. 

The Force ebbed and flowed around some rough beast waiting to be born.

-

Chancellor Palpatine’s stomach growled. Sly Moore didn’t look at him. A smell like a rotten juju egg permeated the air. She was glad she wasn’t Force sensitive enough to feel him as he visited the ‘fresher. That man could not bear good fruit. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sometime they'll get to grocery shopping. Probably around mid-January as I'm on break between semesters.


End file.
